


Gone, baby, gone.

by OnlyHereForGallavich (orphan_account)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, Domestic!Gallavich, Established Relationship, Gallavich, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Illness, Injury, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Resurrection, Sad, Sad!Ian, Supernatural Elements, fagbashing, he comes right back, hurt!mickey, no bipolar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/OnlyHereForGallavich
Summary: Mickey dies. But even death can't keep these boys apart.~don't worry, I don't do sad endings~





	

**Author's Note:**

> hii guys! hope you like this one... it got a little longer than I intended but eh x
> 
> p.s. I will be updating Wonderwall soon, so hang tight guys!

   The Chicago winter was cruel on the Southside residents. They could barely make it through the summer, when the lights could stay switched off till night and they could all jump into the pool instead of showers some days. The winter was tough. Everyone needed new coats, hot showers and electricity was needed even at five in the evening. The boys didn’t have much; it wasn’t easy moving into a place of their own on Mickey’s mechanic paycheck and Ian’s tutoring English. But they had managed it by scraping together most of their money. That meant a crappy radiator that didn’t work and virtually no savings. But it seemed strangely worth it when they could make love on the couch without being afraid their families would walk in. When Ian would place a rose on the table in an attempt to make the electricity-saving candlelit dinners romantic ones instead. When they showered together to _actually_ preserve water this time. When they cuddled in the bed that was an ancient Gallagher relic and fell asleep knowing the next day would be exactly the same.

 

   Growing up the way Mickey and Ian had, they loved that normality. They didn’t want too much excitement or drama. The quiet domesticity of their lives was enough. But growing up the way they do, they kind of knew life didn’t stay as smooth sailing as theirs. They were both unconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

   And it did.

 

  It didn’t just drop down with a thud, but with force that shattered their world completely.

 

   The Chicago winter was tough on the Southside residents. Especially ones who had been stabbed in the chest for loving who they loved and left bleeding in the snow, slowly dying of blood loss and the cold.

 

//

 

   It took Ian hours to find Mickey. He ran around the neighborhood blindly, shouting out Mickey’s name when the other boy disappeared after going out to buy a pack of smokes and didn’t answer any of the billion times Ian had called him.

 

   When Ian finally saw him, it wasn’t Mickey he had found. It was Mickey’s body.

 

  He knew Mickey was dead the moment he touched him. Ian had seen dead people before; growing up in the Southside, it was inevitable. He had watched his mother nearly bleed out completely when he was just a teenager, for fuck’s sake. But nothing, nothing could have prepared him for the moment when he was holding the person he loved most in the world’s dead body in his hands; close enough to touch but far beyond his reach.

 

   “Mickey, Mickey, Mickey,” He chanted, tears streaming down his face, as if saying the precious name enough would change things. “No, no,” He moaned, sobbing louder. This couldn’t be it, it couldn’t be the end. They had fought for so long, and so hard. Mickey not being alive was… incomprehensible. Life without him wasn’t even possible for Ian. Mickey was permanent, constant. Mickey was _air._ How could you live without air?

 

   Some instinct in him made him call the cops, and when the ambulance came they had to force him off Mickey, since Ian was curled around him like he would never let him go. They had let the hysterical boy into the ambulance, or rather he forced his way in. He heard them say, “Time of death, estimated to be ten thirty p.m. on Friday, 20th December, 2017” He saw them close Mickey’s wide, unseeing, yet still impossibly blue eyes. He felt his own heart wither and die with Mickey.

 

//

 

   It wasn’t the stab wound that killed Mickey, unlike the attackers had intended. It was the cold. Ian’s subconscious noted the doctor talking about how his attire was _simply not enough_ to keep him warm.  Ian felt sick as he recalled the money he had been saving up so he could buy Mickey a better coat for Christmas. The older man had been wearing the same stuff for as long as Ian had known him. He had one picked out and everything, in one of those fancy north side stores. _Too little, too late,_ Ian bitterly thought.

 

   He was still numb. It hadn’t washed over him yet, the realization that he would never kiss Mickey again. That he would never see him smile. That he would live tomorrow, and the day after, and all the ones after that without him. If it had, he wouldn’t have been so silent in his tears, so stoic in his grief. They were at the hospital, still, and he was sitting alone as his siblings listened to the doctors. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to know how Mickey’s blood had frozen in his veins, how he had suffered. He wouldn’t survive it.

 

   There was little that could make Ian move. The pull of their bed was strong. Everything in him was tired. So he silently got up as the Gallaghers left, sick at the thought of leaving Mickey in this cold place alone. But that body on the table wasn’t Mickey. Mickey was with him, his soul warm and strong beside him. As Lip drove, Ian instructed that he drop him to their house. Lip looked skeptical, like Ian was a flight risk. “Lip, please,” he begged, too tired to fight, “I need this. I want… I want _home,_ ” Tears pricked at the edge of his eyes, the back of them aching from too many tears.

 

   Lip had folded eventually, dropping Ian off to their house with a lot of preaching and warnings. Ian’s breathing ceased the moment he entered the house, pieces of Mickey everywhere. In the messy dishes that he had forgotten to wash the night before. In the Seagal DVD lying in front of their tiny TV. In the plaid t-shirt hung over the arm of the couch. And in the bed, jesus, the bed. Mickey’s smell lingered on his pillow, on their bed, choking him till he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. He didn’t want small parts of Mickey to keep him pacified. He wanted _all_ of him, back in his arms.

 

    Face tucked into Mickey’s pillow, Ian let himself cry.

 

//

 

   It had taken three days till Lip could convince Ian to eat anything, and get out of the house so they could arrange for Mickey’s funeral. It wasn’t a bipolar low. It was the human depression that came with losing the person you thought you were going to spend your life with.

 

   Living without Mickey was… unworkable. Ian was still living around him, including him in all he did. The meals he made for two. He made sure there was hot water left after he was done showering. He signed the Christmas presents for the Gallagher clan _‘From Mickey and Ian’_. He didn’t make it to the Christmas celebrations that year. Lip bitched about it for a minute, then seemed to remember the dead boyfriend and didn’t bother him again.

 

   So Ian was understandably surprised when someone knocked on their… _his_ door come Christmas morning. He opened it, moving lethargically the way he seemed to do everything since Mickey had gone.

 

   It was Mandy.

 

   Mandy, who Ian hadn’t seen in over a year. Mandy, who no one even talked about anymore. Mnady, who Ian couldn’t track down after it had happened. Mandy, who didn’t know her brother was dead.

 

   She grinned at the door, “Hey, Ian.” Ian was too stunned to respond for a second, because she was _here_ and those blue eyes were just too familiar, it sucked the breath out of his lungs. She shoved past him into the house, taking in the mess, “Thought you were making an honest woman of my brother.” She turned around to smile at him, kicking a takeout container with the toe of her boot. (Yes she was wearing boots. And a fancy coat. She looked as Northside as you could get.) “Where is that dick?”

 

   “He’s gone,” Ian breathed, tears filling his eyes yet again. Wasn’t there some kind of limit as to how much one person could cry? Or would it go on forever?

 

   “What?” Mandy asked, not understanding.

 

   “He’s dead,” Ian said, watching as her face twitched in understanding, grief and then the impenetrable Milkovich mask Ian had learnt to see through. He reached out a hand to comfort her, offering her whatever little strength he had built.

 

   “He’s not gone,” Mandy snapped. Ian’s heart broke (again). “He is. Mandy, I’m sorry, it was-“ Ian tried to explain past the giant lump in his throat when Mandy interrupted. “No, idiot. That’s not- that’s not what I mean.” Now it was Ian’s turn to not understand. “Wait a second,” She told him, muttering a quick _shit_ under her breath as she scrolled through her phone. Ian watched her in amazement, having expected unexpressed grief, not complete denial. He almost forgot to be sad in utter shock.

 

   “The fuck are you doing Mandy?” he snapped, not knowing how to feel about his best friend’s casual reaction to her brother and his lover’s death. Mandy straight up ignored him, instead pressing the phone against her ear, having found who she was looking. When Mandy spoke then, her voice finally broke, “I need you, mama. It’s Mickey. He’s gone.”

 

//

 

   It sounded completely stupid. It sounded dumb and superstitious and he was convinced the two nearly identical women were completely delusional.

 

   Ian agreed to try it.

 

   To try whatever ancient Ukrainian ceremony Mickey’s mom had suggested. At first he had laughed, the first time since Mickey had died. Then he yelled lightly, snapping that it wasn’t funny, that Mickey was _gone_ and she was fucking with him for sport when his heart really couldn’t take it. Then the desperation kicked in, and he agreed. He agreed to fucking have a nighttime ritual around his boyfriend’s grave to bring him back from the fucking dead. It couldn’t hurt, could it? Impossible was better than nothing.

 

   So here he was. Freezing his ass off in the dead of Chicago winter with two crazy people with a dumbass idea when he could be at home in _their_ warm bed surrounded by Mickey’s memory. He watched Mila, eyes closed as she chanted something unintelligible in Ukrainian. Yup, definitely insane (hey, he was allowed to say it.)

 

   Despite, the ridiculousness of the situation, Ian couldn’t help the wild hope that rose in him, that this meant he could have Mickey back. He had declined to sit with the women next to the grave they had opened up, feeling sick at the very thought of seeing Mickey’s dead body again, though Mandy assured them that the body wasn’t likely to have decomposed at all yet, since it was freshly buried. That comment had led to him actually puking his guts out in a corner of the graveyard.

 

   Ian would never forget that moment, waiting with bated breath, till Mandy started crying. Ian had never seen Mandy crying before. That had to mean bad news, right? Ian’s eyes pricked with tears, ready to give up on this ridiculous conquest he had nonetheless hoped would be successful.

 

   That was until he saw a pale white hand reach out of the deep hole. It looked like something out of a zombie movie, and the situation actually was like one. Ian fell against the ground, barely breathing, mind racing. _What the fuck, what the fuck,_ his mind chanted, soon changing to, _Mickey, Mickey, Mickey._

 

   “Mama?” He heard the familiar voice asking in confusion, watching as the two women of his family broke down, “Mandy?” They helped him out of the hole, while Ian was still immobilized. Mickey’s eyes fell on Ian’s, voice breaking as he asked, “Ian?”

 

   Finally able to move, Ian darted forward. He wrapped himself around the smaller body, smothering him against the ground, wrapping him in the coat he had despite Mickey… leaving, because he was sentimental that way. He didn’t realize he was sobbing until Mickey quipped, “Stop dripping on me,” in a quiet, choked up voice.

 

   Mickey was tired. When Ian could finally breathe again, they went home. Ian ran him a burning hot bath, settling in with him as per Mickey’s silent plea. Then they went into bed, and Mickey grinned as Ian piled three blankets on top of him. There would be questions, so many questions from the Gallaghers and the entire neighborhood. But none of that mattered as Ian pressed his body against Mickey, trying to warm his limbs further with gentle touches. He closed his eyes, pressed against the person he thought he had lost forever, and vowed to never let Mickey feel cold again.


End file.
